[Announce] Poschengband 5.0.1 Released

[GenericPseudonym]

Well there are two ways for an item to get aggravation. It can have built-in aggravation (like, say, Grond) or it can get it as a random side-effect from a curse. Unless the aggravation was added by cursing the item, it can't be removed by uncursing the item. And what runeswords get is the built-in kind, just like they get built-in brands or built-in dice bonuses.

Maybe make it so if you eat enough souls, it goes away.

Actually it shows up when you eat enough souls! Runeswords get permanent aggravation once their dice * sides are greater than 30 (and "The thirst of your sword redoubles!"), and if you get dice * sides > 60 you'll get an even more fun suprise.

Generally how runeswords work: first they randomly decide whether to increase tohit, damage, dice or sides. Then they compare the killed monster's level to the current value -- low level monsters won't get you any bonus. There's a random chance to either increase the value it picked or fail. Uniques are 6x as likely to successfuly add damage dice or sides, and never fail to add enchantment.

Lastly, when you kill a unique, there's a random chance based on its level to add a random brand.


Oh yeah, and if you want to identify things in wizmode i'm sure there's a separate command for that rather than using the flag tweak thing.

[krazyhades]

Early on the aggravation can be removed by uncursing, but later on the runesword gets it permanently.

[DavidB1111]

Well there are two ways for an item to get aggravation. It can have built-in aggravation (like, say, Grond) or it can get it as a random side-effect from a curse. Unless the aggravation was added by cursing the item, it can't be removed by uncursing the item. And what runeswords get is the built-in kind, just like they get built-in brands or built-in dice bonuses.


Actually it shows up when you eat enough souls! Runeswords get permanent aggravation once their dice * sides are greater than 30 (and "The thirst of your sword redoubles!"), and if you get dice * sides > 60 you'll get an even more fun suprise.

Generally how runeswords work: first they randomly decide whether to increase tohit, damage, dice or sides. Then they compare the killed monster's level to the current value -- low level monsters won't get you any bonus. There's a random chance to either increase the value it picked or fail. Uniques are 6x as likely to successfuly add damage dice or sides, and never fail to add enchantment.

Lastly, when you kill a unique, there's a random chance based on its level to add a random brand.


Oh yeah, and if you want to identify things in wizmode i'm sure there's a separate command for that rather than using the flag tweak thing.

But the runesword was able to remove the aggravation flag from using a Scroll of *remove Curse* always. I want to know why this was changed. Killing the first enemy to get that flag was the point where you could remove it.
This is what really threw me through a loop.

It was not a built in version of Aggravation, otherwise, it would have been impossible to ever remove it. So either it was somehow changed to swap out your runesword with one with built in aggro like Grond, or something broke somewhere.

I've never seen it get that high up on the list to see the other fun surprise though. And if it gets the TY_Curse, well, I'm going to have a blacksmith forge Grond in real life, and smack the person who thought that was a good idea with it, and yes, it will more than likely have the Earthquake flag even in the real world. It's a 100 pound hammer after all. Don't ask how I'm going to pick it up.

Also, I dare say it doesn't need Aggravation in the first place. It doesn't scream and yell as you carry it around. It's a permanently cursed item, it doesn't need every negative in the game.

Remember, the terror Mask was already nerfed into oblivion by always having the Ty_Curse on it, while in Zangband, it has two distinct versions of itself, and both of them most certainly does not have the TY_Curse.


I'm not using the debug Object modify to identify items. I use it to reroll things occasionally. The flags are completely broken totally and utterly. This is a bug, unless it was designed to make cheater's heads explode.

And I've had plenty of uniques being killed without giving any enchantment, to hit or otherwise, so their 6x times more likely to do something doesn't seem to work all that well.

It's nice to know that the chance is based on the level of the enemy I suppose.

I just feel as though unnecessary nerfs to a Runesword's Aggravation flag is a bit unkind.

What next, it just hits you in the face randomly if you try to rest? "No, kill things!"

Let's look at the Gloves of Thanos. Who would ever use those. No those two immunities are not that good early on. Let's not make the Runesword the new Gloves of Thanos.
And why would the Gloves of the Greek God of Death/Marvel's Thanos be so heavily cursed? Also, isn't Infinity Gauntlet a randart name?

Now, if it was a bug that the *Remove Curse* scroll worked on Runeswords, I can understand that, but in my experience, they were never designed to replace themselves with Grond so to speak.

And honestly, I can't fathom why anyone would ever want to use any item with Aggravation ever. The entire point of it is to make whatever item it is on completely worthless except for the most randomly overpowered builds of all time, and Trump Cyberdemon spam is not one of them, or Trump Call the Void, or Trump Summon Donald. Wait that last one doesn't exist...

Even the TY_Curse has less irritating results than Aggravation, and that includes when it had the ability to summon Cyberdemons and Paralyze you without it being in Nightmare mode.
Amberlite curses are more fun than Aggravation. OOD summoning of uniques and hasting them with "Shriek." is more fun.
Unless you're a Death Sword, Amberlite curses are really annoying, for a death sword, they don't seem to spam Cyberdemons. Or even activate most of the time.

Chaos brand on swords are less annoying than Aggravation and the stupid polymorph makes it useless.

Heck, I think most people would rather have a turn on the Rack than deal with Aggravation in an Angband variant.

If you're only on the Rack for a little while, it just makes you grow a few inches painfully.

And yes, I know I tend to ramble on a bit and write walls of text. "David breaths confusion! You are confused!" Feel free to add that to your signature.

[GenericPseudonym]

Aggravation is not really as terrible as you say it is unless you play on always_small_levels. You just have to frequently use detection so you know when a monster is going to come close enough to get aggravated, and when they do get close enough you have to expect to fight them (aka don't go rushing forwards and waking up more things or you'll end up having to fight multiple nasties at once).

I'd much rather have aggravate and know when scary things are headed for me than have ty curse and potentially get randomly covered in cyberdemons at any time.

[DavidB1111]

Okay, fair enough. I just hate Aggravation with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns.

I can live with it, even if it's a pain to deal with neverending zerg rushes.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Found another bug:

This -

"The Phoenix breathes light. You feel that your Steel Helm of the Troll
is protecting you. You stand your ground!"

Uh...That headgear doesn't "protect" me from The Phoenix's light breath, does it? Character got killed anyways.

[Pete Mack]

Why are you fighting the phoenix anyway? Just a mini-tarrasque.

[HugoVirtuoso]

I ended up in a bad teleport position that landed me right next to The Phoenix

[nikheizen]

"The Phoenix breathes light. You feel that your Steel Helm of the Troll
is protecting you. You stand your ground!"

Nice of the phoenix to shed light on that bug.

[murphy]

something bizarre happened playing 5.0.2 that made me get this message:

An unexpected error has occurred because an error of type 42 occurred.

saved a dump here http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=19785

[Regalia]

An unexpected error has occurred because an error of type 42 occurred.

Isn't this just flavor? Many bands have amusing messages when you press unbound keys.

[murphy]

hehe, now i see that is the case. i guess i was confused in real life

[DavidB1111]

Why are you fighting the phoenix anyway? Just a mini-tarrasque.

Why would you not fight the Phoenix? Are you a big fan of the Serpent of Chaos /whoever else summoning unique enemies?


In my experience, the Phoenix isn't that hard of an enemy to beat down.
Unlike the bird uniques that launch you into the air and spam that ability nonstop.

[Raajaton]

I'm having an issue with the game on Version 5.0.2 now where I just opened up the client, and my primary window does not open. It's only opening up the term windows that I have set up. I'm running on Windows 10.

Anyone seen this before?

[Raajaton]

Disregard ... for some reason the main window was minimized and the rest of the term windows weren't. I realized that I could see it when I hovered the mouse over the icon on the task bar and could maximize it to see it again.

All is well